Riss picked me up around 5am in her forest green Volvo wagon. I’d texted her a few times that morning, nervous about getting to the airport on time. I was up till 3am worrying about the last minute little things: Would Eliza remember where I left the key? Were my directions on how to print the sale signs on the new machine at work cohesive? Were three pairs of socks enough?
Riss worked on photos in the airport while I checked in. We hugged and laughed and I could hear her working the shutter on her old Mamiya as I turned around and shuffled into security with everyone else.
The next twenty-four hours were long and largely unremarkable: Portland to Chicago. Hot water for my tea. Chicago to Frankfurt. Left my jacket on the plane. Frankfurt to Vienna. Too tired to care. Vienna to Odessa. And everyone’s pushing to get their bags, and we’re shuffling like livestock through two tiny doors and I don’t really know where I am, and I haven’t heard english since two flights ago, and then there’s Jeff on the other side of the doors. And he’s grinning and holding three gorgeous roses. And I’m in Ukraine.
We walk outside, and even though the air is crisp and smells like exhaust it’s remarkably refreshing. As we walk to the bus, Jeff deflects cab driver’s advances and it’s the first time I hear him speak Russian and it sounds amazing.
We spend a couple of days in Odessa checking out the markets, walking out near the water, and catching up. It had been seven months since we’d last seen each other. I recover from my jet lag in Odessa, then we take a mid morning bus to Vilkovo, where he’s been living for the majority of that time and working as a teacher at a small sea-foam-green painted school.
According to locals (and later confirmed by a mysterious guidebook we found in an apartment in Chisinau) Vilkovo is known as the “Ukrainian Venice” which, actually, is a hell of a stretch. But still, it’s charming, with tiny streets that are largely unpaved, a couple of blocks worth of markets, a small church with a tall white steeple and the school, nestled inside a delicate white fence.
I felt exceptionally shy, especially during the first few days, and was reluctant and timid to take photos while we were out.
Jeff lives in a small cottage behind his landlord Nadia’s house. There’s a small gas stove, electric heater and a futon bed. His place is closest to the garden, which borders a small stream with thin wood planks along the banks, an alternate route to get into town.
Nadia has us over for dinner, and the majority of the items on the table are vegetables that she’s pickled and canned from her garden earlier in the season. We drink homemade wine and ask questions back and forth. She raises up toast after toast, and Jeff translates for me.
Nadia explains that earlier in the day, she’d gone out and lit the fire in the shower, so we’d have hot water, and after dinner we run out into the cold and quickly close the heavy metal door to the shower room which also doubles as a sauna, so as not to let out any of the built up heat. The shower is amazing and I can’t tell if it’s because it follows a long day of traveling on a cold and bumpy bus, or because I know someone took time out of their day, to build a fire, to ensure that I’d enjoy it.
Jeff takes me to school and I meet his director and some of the teachers he’s working with. His students all seem extremely excited and run around crazy in the hallways, the girls whisper and giggle as we walk by and the boys come up and shake his hand, even the little ones. Jeff leads an english class with some of the older students and we enact a sort of press-conference where the they take turns asking me questions in english. They ask me about my favorite food, music I like, places I’ve been and how many tattoos I have. One of the girls asks how Jeff and I met, and he explains that we were in school and he thought I was cute, and we all laugh.
Eventually it was time to leave Vilkovo. We walked into town before the sun was up, with our backpacks, a couple of cups of black tea, and a group of small dogs nipping at our heels. We took our seats on a compact bus overwhelmed by the smell of cigarettes, and soon we were heading north, to Chisinau.
